Hi guys n gals,
Just picked up another w108 last night.
Its quite nice, but its painted a really browny deep red, kinda tomato sauce.
It seems to be a bit oxadized and dull in places, so I was going to polish her up to try and bring that colour out a bit better.
What polish do you guys use/recomend?
Techniques?
use one of those electric buffer/polishers? or by hand?
thanks

based on my experience and others might be different, but a proper cutting compound and electric buff will be worth every cent on something this bad. but if you need the exercise then fine! Recently I was surprised how hard it was to get good old fashioned cutting compound from auto accessory places - instead selling t-cut etc, which is fine for the right job but it sounds like you need a much heavier cut.

yeah Ive heard good things about the meguiars polish as well as their wet look wax.
Any one here used them???
Also what are your thoughts on the coloured polishes to restore colour?
I wanna get back some more red and lessen the brown
M

try a small patch with cutting compound and you will probably be surprised how much colour is restored. Only tried the colour polish once and wasn't impressed. Meguirs is good, like a number of good companies, but I still think you need to cut of a layer of that old paint. I have used one of their clay blocks on a car that was pretty good and it did a fantastic job and also use their polish and the carnuba wax on top to protect, but if your paint is so old you are seeing colour difference, I would cut it first. Go straight in with the expensive polish and I reckon you will spend a lot more to get to that same point. Any other experiences with getting a shine on something that hasn't been touched in a long time? My experience is red is one of your worst colours but they have always come up great.

I would use a 3M product, called Finesse-it™ it is a liquid cut compound, equivalent to 1500 'grit' AlO2

they also have 2000, 3000 'grit' as well. I would do this, then one quick buff very light.
follow up with prepsol, using a clean lint free rag and let stand for a couple of hours to allow solvent to evaporate.

as for polish... I've used lots of different waxes and silicones / polymers.... and still yellow wax / carnauba wax is the best of all. and polishes out to the finest sheen.

a proper detailer / panel shop charges a few hundred to do this with a machine, and theyre pretty quick too. It might be worth your while if you're time poor.

Sanding is a lot quicker at getting heavy oxidation out of paint than cutting compound... how bad is the oxidation?

if you reckon you can get away with a heavy cut compound and the job will only take a couple of hours, then thats OK, otherwise I'd be blocking back with wet sanding 1500 / 2000 w&d first, before using a fine cut cleaner.

Thanks for you help guys.
The paint code on my w108 is 576, which I believe is supposed to be red (rot), which is a really lipstick kinda red.
But at the moment it looks really brown.
Will this process help me get it back to that kind of colour???

Matt Riots wrote:Thanks for you help guys.
The paint code on my w108 is 576, which I believe is supposed to be red (rot), which is a really lipstick kinda red.
But at the moment it looks really brown.
Will this process help me get it back to that kind of colour???

If it is not too far gone, certainly.
If the paint has started desintegration, then unfortunately no.

My TE is starting to get oxidization on the roof and I might just have to do something about that.
Unfortunately the wagon has those strips on the roof which make it impossible to effectively use a power polisher.
Conventional wisdom says to use the least aggressive product to do the job and sort of work your way up the scale of nastiness until you get to paint stripper.
This is a example of what can be achieved http://penoff.com/Penoff.com/S500_Detailing.html

If you need to cut try Mequiar's Ultra Cut Compound M105 then finish off with Mequiar's M205 ultra finishing polish (these are great products) Depends how bad your paint is if not so bad just use the M205, best thing is to test with M205 on a small area first, if this does not do the trick, test with M105, if this works then you will need to cut (m105) before polishing (M205). Though before you do anything you need to clean the car, remove all tar & bugs, then clay bar the car. Only at this point should you consider machine cutting/polishing your car. Once you have done the machine cut/polish you will need to prep the surface before applying a sealant and or wax (http://www.zas.com.au/product/645/p21s_ ... 350ml.html
Sealants are great for protection, on top of the sealant you can put a quality carnuba wax (2-3 coats 24 hours apart, if you are a nerd like me) then you will have a shiny car.

Also don't forget if you use a sealant you need to give it time to cure before applying any wax.

You will most probably find that you don't need to cut the paint back that far to restore the colour. Swirl marks and scratches usually require a bit more work, but once again depends on the condition of the paint.